What do you think?

US intelligence services are investigating the terrorist ties of the gunman who left 50 dead when he stormed a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday in the worst mass shooting on US soil.

Details released by US authorities about Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen of Afghan descent, point to a series of suspicious links with Islamic radicals, culminating in a call to emergency services the night of the shooting to proclaim allegiance to the jihadi group Isis before making the attack.

Mateen had worked in Florida for the private security company G4S since 2007, most recently guarding a gated retirement community in Port St Lucie. The incident will raise questions over the company’s staffing and vetting procedures following a string of scandals involving its employees.

There have been 998 mass shootings — attacks in which four or more people excluding the shooter were shot at the same general time — in the US over the past four years.

For the first time on Monday, Americans will confront the stark choice they face in November as the two presidential candidates respond to the crisis. In early responses, Donald Trump took credit for “being right on radical Islamic terrorism”, whereas Hillary Clinton tweeted a note of concern for the victims, then issued a statement that sought to address the main issues that the tragedy touched on: terrorism, gay rights and gun control. “The disparity between the two encapsulates the choice facing voters this fall: Do they see Trump’s bombast as the solution to a dangerous world, or do they find comfort in Clinton’s more familiar manner?” (FT, Vox, Wapo)

In the news

Goldman set for Libya trial A $1bn legal battle pitting Goldman Sachs against Libya’s sovereign wealth fund promises to give a rare glimpse into the bank’s dealings with one of the world’s richest investors, and into the behaviour of its bankers before the credit crunch. The lawsuit, in which the Libyan Investment Authority claims that Goldman exploited its limited financial experience in 2008, forcing it into risky and ultimately lossmaking derivative trades, starts on Monday at London’s High Court. (FT)

Symantec to buy Blue Coat for $4.65bn Symantec is acquiring threat-blocking service Blue Coat Systems from its private-equity owners Bain Capital for $4.65bn, the struggling antivirus company’s largest deal for more than a decade. Greg Clark, Blue Coat chief executive, will take the top job at Symantec, a position that has been vacant since April. The combined company will be the world’s largest enterprise security business by revenues. (FT)

Kenya protests escalate A wave of protests across Kenya’s big cities is threatening to plunge one of Africa’s best performing economies into political crisis ahead of elections next year. The opposition-led demonstrations, which have left at least five dead and scores injured, are ostensibly about demands for an overhaul of the tainted electoral commission. But analysts say the crisis is exposing toxic power battles among the political elite. (FT)

Baltic battles Concerned over the build-up of Russian troops on their borders and in the Baltic Sea, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Poland are in discussions with defence contractors to create a regional anti-aircraft missile shield to protect against Russian aircraft. (FT)

The cost of saying thank you Citigroup is suing phone company AT&T on the grounds that its use of the term “thanks” amounts to a trademark infringement. (FT)

It’s a big day for

Apple The tech group holds its annual developers’ conference in San Francisco, where it is expected to reveal the next phase of Siri’s evolution. (FT)

Bollywood filmmakers, who are up in arms over a heavy-handed attempt by the cinema regulator to censor a gritty film about the epidemic of drug abuse in the farming state of Punjab. A court is due to rule on the matter on Monday, in what will be a test for Indian free speech. FT)

Oscar Pistorius A sentencing hearing for the South African athlete who murdered his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, has started in Pretoria. He faces a jail term of at least 15 years, but his sentence can be reduced due to time already spent in prison and mitigating factors. The hearing is expected to last all week with a sentence by Friday. (BBC)

Food for thought

Why Americans care about Brexit The demographic parallels between those backing Brexit and Donald Trump’s supporters are almost eerily close, writes Ed Luce. Their motives are equally simplistic. Leaving Europe is to Brexiters what building a wall with Mexico is to Trumpians — a guillotine on the cacophonous multiculturalism of 21st-century life. “From an empirical point of view, Mr Trump’s beautiful wall is no different to the splendid isolation of Boris Johnson, the leading Brexit campaigner: both are reckless illusions.” (FT)

Keep track of the presidential race with our daily US politics newsletter. Sign up here.

Sergei Magnitsky's bitter legacy The death of an accountant in police custody has become, for many in the west, an allegory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia — brutal, oppressive and corrupt. A controversial new film is challenging the “established” story. (FT)

How Donald Trump made millions on his bankrupted casinos The presumptive Republican nominee often boasts of his business prowess, but a report on his Atlantic City properties argues that the only business he seems to be good at is making himself rich. (NYT)

Clever technology is bad for our brains Do we really need smart products to help us clean our teeth or know when to hang washing? asks Lucy Kellaway. “The demand for such products remains a puzzle. The fact that people are so willing to pay over the odds for non-solutions to non-problems is the best evidence of the irrationality of the consumer the market has yet provided.” (FT)

How sexism held back space exploration They were considered outsiders, both skilled in performing mathematical equations quickly, yet neither of them received a warm reception when they arrived at the laboratory. One was human and one a machine. But both Janez Lawson and the IBM she programmed were known as computers. (The Atlantic)

Can ‘super coral’ save the reef? As fears mount over the Great Barrier Reef’s worst coral bleaching event in recorded history, biotechnologists in Australia are looking at ways to grow “super coral” that is more tolerant of global warming. (BBC)

Video of the day

A look at the week ahead Daniel Garrahan previews some of the stories the FT is watching in the coming days, including Disney opening its first theme park resort in mainland China, first-quarter results from clothing group Inditex, and central bank meetings dominating the economic agenda. (FT)